Indo-American pairing Sania Mirza and Liezel Huber defeated Croatian-British duo of Darija Jurak and Heather Watson to enter the quarterfinals of the women's doubles event at the Aegon International here Tuesday.
The second seeds were not in their elements but managed to win their first round tie 7-6(4), 7-6(3) in one hour and 36 minutes on the grass courts of Devonshire Park.
Sania-Liezel had a shaky start as they were broken by their unseeded opponents in the in third game of match. However, the second seeds broke back in the next game to level the match.
The pairs broke each other once more before forcing a tie-break which the Indo-American combine took 7-4.
In the second set, after winning the first service game, Darija-Heather broke their opponents in the second game to go 2-0 up. Like the first set, Sania-Liezel again broke their opponents to level the match.
With the set level at five-all, Sania and Liezel broke Darika and Heather in the crucial 11th game. The Croat-Brazilian pair returned the favour and pushed the match into another tiebreak.
The Indo-American combination found legs and upped their game to take the tiebreaker 7-3.
Sania-Liezel will next face Romanian-Czech pair of Monica Niculescu and Klára Zakopalová in the last eight clash.
